Are Sydney Anglicans actually Anglicans? If an Anglican from another part of Australia, or from the United Kingdom, walked into an ordinary Sydney Anglican parish on a Sunday morning would they recognise what they saw as being Anglican?

The building may have a shape that echoes the distinctive shape of countless English parish churches. You are, however, unlikely to find a robed or collared clergyman leading the service - unless you come perhaps to the early morning service. While the structure and outline of the prayer book service will be in evidence, it will be used flexibly. The music will most likely be modern in style and the words projected on a large screen. The pipe organ and the pulpit will not be used. The prayers may well be ex tempore.

For Melbourne journalist Muriel Porter, there is no way in which what I have just described could be called "Anglican." Her notion of Anglicanism relates to a particular liturgical style. Without this particular style, in their mind there is no Anglican identity.

The assumption of course is that the particular style of liturgy that she has in mind is normative for Anglican worship throughout history and in every place - and that Anglicanism itself permits little or no variation in that form. This point of view reflects the almost complete supremacy in most Western countries of the liberal-Catholic paradigm of Anglicanism, with its emphasis on liturgy over doctrine.

Evangelical Anglicans, however, have a commitment to Anglicanism as a theological entity. That is, they recognise that even if Anglicanism is not as strictly confessional as some other churches, it still has doctrinal parameters.

There is for Anglicans a core of orthodoxy around which all manner of stylistic variations are permitted and even welcomed. The needs of mission and local custom make liturgical flexibility desirable - a practicality that the Anglican formularies of the sixteenth century themselves recognise.

What is consistent as far as evangelical Anglicans are concerned is a common faith. They are Anglicans not merely by convenience but by conviction.

Sydney's Anglicans are the inheritors of an Anglicanism that has a long and deeply established heritage in the Church of England and they share in an expression of Anglicanism that is, in global terms, widespread. Far from being an aberration caused by a quirk of history or a narrow ultra-Protestant sect, they can trace their way of being Anglican in continuous line back to the Reformation and even somewhat before.

Moreover, the classic Anglican description of the supreme authority of Scripture resonates deeply with the evangelicalism that is found in most parishes in Sydney.

So what is an "Anglican"? In one sense, the term itself is anachronistic. The Church of England is primarily an institution, the national church of a particular country. It was only with the growth of the British Empire that the question of "Anglicanism" arose - especially when there was now a political separation between England and the United States of America.

The Episcopal Church of the United States was not governed by the King of England from 1776 - so in what sense could it, and other former Church of England churches, understand their continuity with the church that had given them birth? It was an identity question that was felt with a particular pressure in the nineteenth century and which has decisive significance for the way we consider the question of "Anglicanism" today.

Since the 1980s, revisionist historians such as Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy have tried to describe the English Reformation of the 1500s as a top-down and chiefly political movement which had little traction amongst the English people themselves.

There is no doubt that the English Reformation was achieved through the workings of statecraft as much as through the conversion of souls. Henry VIII's "great matter" - the problem of his barren marriage to Catherine of Aragon - was the catalyst not only for an institutional break with the Church of Rome and with the papacy, but for a change in the theological outlook of the English church.

While Haigh and Duffy try to paint this as almost entirely engineered by a coterie of theologians like Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, there is no question but that the faith of Reformation Europe had made some inroads among the English people in the 1520s, however clandestine.

Thomas Cranmer is not a figure for Anglicans equivalent to the way Martin Luther is for Lutherans. Nonetheless, Cranmer's Reformation bequeathed to the English Church as particular theological outlook which cannot be eclipsed in any description of Anglican identity. Though some have tried, Oxford historian Richard Turnbull notes, "it is difficult to deny the formative role of the Reformation on the polity, theology and ministry of the Church of England."

It is certainly appropriate to use terms like "Protestant" and "Reformed" when speaking about Anglicanism.

Cranmer set down three large foundation stones upon which henceforth the English church was built: the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. These have not come down to us unaltered from his pen. They were subject to a degree of refinement and alteration.

Even so, the attempt to minimise the importance of these formularies in some parts of the Anglican Communion in recent years only reveals an embarrassment with the unabashed Protestantism of these documents.

In other words, they express a "protest" against the Roman Catholic Church and a theology which was itself moving away from Lutheranism and is mainly learnt from the Reformed churches in Germany and Switzerland. South African Anglican scholar Nicholas Taylor notes that these three documents "became a definitive expression of Anglican doctrine and discipline."

"Unabashed Protestantism" - is that an overstatement? That the liturgy was now to be in the vernacular was in itself recognition of a different - Protestant - understanding of the very nature of Christian faith itself.

The words of the Prayer Book were not meant to be experienced by the people as a mystery evading their understanding. The service of Holy Communion was, in successive editions of the Prayer Book, moving in a more Protestant or "Reformed" direction. Recent work by renowned Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch shows that Cranmer's Eucharistic theology was becoming even less like Luther's understanding of the "real presence" and shifting towards a Reformed understanding.

The Thirty-Nine Articles assert the primacy of the authority of Scripture for Anglican faith and practice. That is not to say that Scripture is the only authority, but it is held to be the supreme authority, even over the great creeds of the church (Article VIII). Article VI reads:

"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

According to the articles, Scripture is the measure of what Anglicans believe.

Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is often held up as the doyen of Anglican divines - "judicious," rational, careful and moderate in tone. For a long time, the standard reading of Hooker was that he had endorsed "the three-legged stool" of Scripture, Reason and Tradition as equal, mutually-informing authorities in Anglican thinking. It is a myth that still persists. Careful reading of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity tells another story. He writes:

"What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever."

Scripture, reason and tradition do not have equal weight for Hooker. Quite clearly, Scripture has precedence, then reason and third, church tradition.

Anglicans often talk of their faith as a via media between Rome and Calvin's Geneva. To read the writings of some of the leading supporters of Elizabeth's religious policy is not to sense a spirit of compromise with Rome, however.

Like the Queen they served, theologians like Hooker were adamant in their Protestantism. What they were arguing about was which variety of Protestantism they would endorse and to what extent. It was more accurately described as a via media between Martin Luther's Wittenberg and John Calvin's Geneva.

What these examples demonstrate is that those who hold that it is thoroughly and authentically Anglican to view Scripture as the supreme authority have a more than reasonable case grounded in the major documents of Anglican history and in the thought of its major theologians.

There are other readings of Anglican history - most notably the reading perpetuated by the Oxford movement in the nineteenth century. Yet even the sketch of Anglicanism I have provided here shows that the Oxford movement's reading of Anglican history could only ever be a selective and polemical one.

A Christian faith which places it emphasis on the supreme authority of Scripture for doctrine and practice and which upholds a reformed view of salvation and the sacraments can with confidence assert its continuous place within the Anglican story. A view of Anglicanism which places Scripture as supreme authority and which has a flexible attitude to secondary matters - such as what garb the clergy wear - certainly has a good case to be considered as authentically Anglican. Such is found in the Sydney diocese.

Sydney Anglicans also identify very strongly with the "Evangelical" movement of the eighteenth century. The first chaplains of the colony were evangelicals and sponsored by the circle of Charles Simeon, one of the leading evangelicals of the Church of England. This was a movement that began within but subsequently exceeded the bounds of the Church of England.

The established church proved too limiting for many and also sought to persecute and expel the proponents of evangelicalism. And yet, there is no doubt that evangelicalism has played and continues to play a major part in the history and ethos of Anglicanism.

Most commonly, the Evangelical movement is thought to have begun in the eighteenth century with the conversion of John Wesley (1703-1791) in 1738. Labelled "enthusiasts" by their sneering opponents in the Church of England, the evangelicals were treated with great hostility and found it difficult to make their livings.

This "enthusiasm," though it seemed crass to some of their co-religionists, was representative of an extraordinary reawakening of ardent faith. It was a direct reaction against the dryness, formalism and rationalism that characterised much of early eighteenth century established Christianity. A Christianity without a heart for God was clearly deficient.

The evangelical movement lead to missionary zeal and social reform on a grand scale; evangelicals formed societies and co-operated trans-denominationally. They wrote hymns that are still sung today. They seemed less interested in ecclesiastical preferment and more concerned with missionary work.

Historic evangelicalism of the type found in Sydney and Anglicanism overlap considerably. Anglicanism is a great denominational home for evangelicalism, but it is not the only one. Likewise, evangelicalism has made and continues to make a considerable contribution to Anglicanism.

According to historian David Bebbington, evangelicals are "conversionist" in that they proclaim the necessity of personal transformation in response to the gospel of grace. They preach to the heart, appealing for repentance of sin and turning to God in dependence. Their gospel is highly individualist in this sense - it is not sufficient for true Christian faith merely to be in possession of membership in a church grouping.

Evangelicals are also activists. They expect the evangelical conversion to result in a transformation of life. This means that the believer is expected to be busy in the process of personal moral renewal. The activism characteristic of evangelicals results in evangelistic mission but also in programmes for social welfare on a large scale - both of which are in evidence among Sydney's Anglicans.

Evangelicals have always been people of the Bible. Like their Reformation forebears, they have taken Scripture as the supreme authority for Christian life and for doctrine. The centrality of preaching for evangelicals is evidence of what this means in practice.

As well as being biblicist, the evangelical is also crucicentric - which means that central place is given to the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Christ is an exemplary figure and a moral teacher, but he is first and foremost the saviour who died for human sins.

In bringing Anglicanism and evangelicalism together, Anglican Evangelicals have mostly but not exclusively subscribed to a form of moderate Calvinism. They appeal for their identity within Anglicanism to the Protestant and Reformed nature of the Anglican settlements of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

This ethos is perhaps where tension with the institutional framework of Anglicanism most often surfaces. More often than not, evangelicals have felt themselves excluded from the positions of power within the Anglican churches of the West. Their priority has always been the preaching of the gospel and not the maintenance of the institutional church.

If the institution inhibits the preaching of Jesus, then there is no question where compromise has to be made. For other Anglicans with a more hierarchical and less egalitarian view this seems like schismatic behaviour.

The evangelical behaviours which have irritated non-evangelical Anglicans historically are magnified in the case of Sydney. The unusual dominance of evangelicals in the diocesan structure of Sydney diocese means that Sydney does look strange to Anglicans who are accustomed to liberal-Catholic hegemony - and ecclesiology - elsewhere. Liberal-Catholics expect to be in charge of things.

But they would be mistaken in calling evangelicalism "unAnglican," for the moderate Calvinist evangelical outlook of Sydney with its missionary activism and its biblicism and its emphasis on the atoning blood of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for sins is utterly consistent with the evangelical Anglican tradition that has had an unbroken presence in the Church of England for nearly three centuries.

The evangelical Anglican scholar Alister McGrath has written:

"My concern is simply to insist that evangelicalism is, historically and theologically, a legitimate and respectable option within Anglicanism. At no point is evangelicalism inconsistent with any of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the only document apart from Scripture, the creeds and the Prayer Book, regarded as authoritative for Anglicans."

As those who count themselves heirs of the Protestant Reformation and the evangelical movement, Sydney Anglicans share in a legitimate and honoured heritage within the Anglican Church.

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